The present disclosure relates to an apparatus for recognizing iris and its operating method. More particularly, to an apparatus for recognizing iris that effectively uses the information regarding the presence of contact lens and operating method of the apparatus.
Electronic devices such as computers and cellular phones include user's personal information in many cases. In some cases, the personal information is being used for electronic commerce too. In any case, these devices need to ensure the personal information can only be used (or) accessed by the original user. This sheds light on problem of accurately identifying a user. To this end, method of identifying a user by using a password and ID has been widely used. However, this method has limitations with respect to personal information protection and anti-hacking. Thus, many alternatives to replace it have been proposed.
Among them, a biometric system is being gradually commercialized. Traditionally, biometric systems use human being's physical characteristics to identify him. Fingerprint recognizing devices are one of the best-commercialized and widely used systems in electronic devices and especially in cellular phones. However, concerns regarding easy spoofing of fingerprints increased the speculations regarding system's security. Thus, an apparatus for recognizing iris has received attention as an alternative method for providing better security.
The apparatus for recognizing iris is an apparatus that makes use of pattern on the iris of a person's eye to check the identity of the person. Such an iris recognizing apparatus has an advantage over fingerprint, as it is hard to spoof iris.
However, people who wear contact lenses for beauty or for eyesight correction are recently increasing. Presence of contact lens has a limitation, as it sometimes may obstruct the original pattern present on the iris and hence affect the performance of iris recognition system. Based on the material, contact lenses can be broadly divided in to two different categories 1) Hard contact lens and 2) Soft contact lens. All other contact lens types can be considered as either derivatives or advancements of these two contact lenses.
The soft contact lens can be of two types. The contact lenses, which are used for beauty purposes, are known as cosmetic contact lens and the lens which are used only for vision and which are clear are called clear soft contact lens. Hard contact lenses are hard, small and used for vision correction. Each type of contact lens has its own effect on iris recognition. In particular, use of cosmetic contact lens that comes in various colors and appearances may cover about 10% to 80% of original iris pattern. There is a chance that someone using cosmetic contact lens can impersonate a person by copying and printing the iris pattern of the target person on to the contact lens. Thus, there is a need for iris recognition systems to detect the presence of contact lens along with determining the type of contact lens worn.